Labour analysis reveals safety risks in NHS

Labour is calling for urgent action to ensure the NHS is vitally equipped for the winter to deal with a second wave of coronavirus.

The plea follows the publication of new analysis which reveals hundreds of extreme risks to patient and staff safety currently blighting hospitals across England. The opposition party claims that the detrimental long-term impact of Tory underfunding on the NHS in the run up to the pandemic has been exposed in official NHS Trust documents.

Analysis of 114 NHS Trust risk registers shows that trusts are faced with hundreds of risks to patient safety classed as ‘significant’ or ‘extreme’, with the majority linked to a lack of funding, staffing shortages or major problems with buildings and failing equipment.

The report highlights that 95 trusts reported a workforce risk, including not having enough staff to manage cancer care, whilst a further 75 trusts reported a financial risk, including one trust warning it did not have enough money to see it through the financial year.

Additionally, 77 trusts reported a capital risk relating to estates, facilities equipment or IT, including risks around not meeting regulatory requirements for ventilation, 96 trusts reported a risk to patient care or patient safety, including risks around infection control, while 94 trusts reported a risk directly related to coronavirus. One of these trusts, Northampton General Hospital, stated that there is a ‘risk of the trust being unable to deliver a recovery plan post Covid-19 with consequential impact on patient and staff safety, patient experience and staff well-being’.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, said: “In a normal winter, these risks would be worrying. In the coming winter, with the incompetent handling of the test and trace system leaving the NHS wide open and poorly supported, they take on a whole new meaning.

“We urgently need a commitment from ministers to fix the problems with test and trace and a timetable by which these issues will finally be sorted. On top of this it is vital that Ministers confirm that the NHS will get the additional support it needs to address these risks. Frontline staff and patients cannot be made to carry the can for Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock’s incompetence.”